Nick Keppol of MartianCraft took an in-depth look at Yosemite’s new application icons. Most intriguing? This:

Grey scale is out — warm and cool tones are in. It’s been a popular look in Hollywood blockbusters: yellow/orange highlights, blue/teal shadows. The new Yosemite icons use similar tonal shifts with their metal materials. If we consider these icons as materials, this tone represents an environment reflection — not merely a color effect.

Don’t necessarily think of Yosemite’s new iconography as a simplification or reduction of the previous OS X pseudo-photorealistic aesthetic. Think of this design language as pushing the definition of “idealized reality”.